Reviewing Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World by Shereen El Feki, The Economist compares the region’s early attitudes toward sex to today’s repressive atmosphere:
Once upon a time things were different. The Prophet Muhammad urged his followers to satisfy their partners in the bedroom. Prudish medieval Christians despised his detailed advice on the ins and outs of sex as “a cunning ploy to win converts”, which undermine their own faith’s fixation on virginity, chastity and monogamy. When Gustave Flaubert travelled to Egypt in the 19th century, he spent hazy days watching bawdy skits on the streets of Cairo about “whores and buggering donkeys”, and fleshy nights enjoying the local prostitutes.
Today East and West have shifted positions. The West, in the eyes of Islamic conservatives at least, is a “cesspit of sexual chaos and moral decay”. Sex in the Arab world is, theoretically at least, confined to “state-registered, family-approved, religiously sanctioned matrimony”.
But in practice, young men and women are hardly as prude as their culture dictates:
In the Arab world, explains an Egyptian gynaecologist, sex is the opposite of sport: “everyone talks about football, but hardly anyone plays it. But sex—everyone is doing it, but nobody wants to talk about it.” As a result young Arabs are painfully ignorant about it. Rania, a doctor, sits in a basement in Cairo operating a helpline for confused teenagers, patiently answering questions about anything from masturbation to whether washing boys’ and girls’ underwear together can lead to pregnancy.
(Photo: Bahraini sex shop owner Khadija Ahmed shows a lingerie item being sold at her shop in Isa, north of the capital Manama, on May 19, 2010. ‘Darkhadija’ appears to be just another lingerie shop from outside, but it actually is the first sex shop in the kingdom of Bahrain. By Adam Jan/AFP/Getty Images)
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